How long did you Breast Feed for and why?

Question

i have been weaning my son for a bout 3 months now. (only cause i want it to be gradual not because i don't know how) i want to be completely done by the time he is 2 which is sept 21st. he only feeds when i put him down for bed (not naps just bed time) everything else he is done with, he just does it for comfort i know.

How long did you breast feed for? and why did you stop when you did?

im asking because i told someone i was weaning my son and they asked me why i was so early. and i was like uhhh he's almost 2. i think hes done. lol

Answer 1

actually my lactation consultant told me i should be starting to wean mine at 1 yr and be done within a few months. so i dont think its early unless im getting some wrong info. sorry i cant be more help

Answer 2

I'm still breast feeding at 8 1/2 months. I don't plan on stopping any time soon.

Answer 3

I plan to let my daughter wean herself when she is ready :-)

Answer 4

I breastfed for 14 months.  My plan had been to go for around a year ... I just didn't get around to weaning until then.

There will always be SOMEONE who objects to your choices.  For every person who says 2 is 'too early' there will be 20 people who will rant that it's disgusting to nurse for that long.  2 is fine. 3 is fine. 18 months is fine.

(If I was to have another baby [not gonna happen], I would have nursed longer.  At the time I didn't know as much about breastefeeding as I do now, and felt that a year was a sensible legnth of time. [And I'd hoped that my large b*****s would return to normal after weaning. Which didn't happen either.])  

Answer 5

i weaned my son at 26 months because he was driving me crazy.  he had terrible nursing manners and i was tired of being his snackbar.

i hope i have more patience with my daughter and that i let her go as long as she wants to.

Answer 6

My son only nursed for 4.5 months!  It wasn't by choice - I had so many complications during pregnancy that by the time the baby was out I needed to have a few surgeries.  I tried pumping during recovery but by the time the pain meds were gone I was all dried up!

Two years is great.  What a lucky lil guy.

Answer 7

Your situation sounds a lot like mine!  I breastfed for just over 2 years.  By the time she was 2 we were down to 2 feedings a day as well.  When I felt she was ready, I simply told her "no more nursing during the day, only at bedtime."  Once she adjusted to that well, I explained to her that she was a big girl now and no more nursing.  She put up a little fuss, but much less than I thought she would.

Who ever said that to you probably practices child-led weaning.  Which they believe that you shouldn't push weaning, and let the child decide when they are ready.  I think its great for some, but for me I felt like encouraging the process a little.  2 years began to feel past my personal comfort limit.  

It really is SUCH a personal decision between mom and baby on when and how it stops.

Good luck, and congrats on making it so far!

Answer 8

1st son was 15 months when weaned... I distracted him with other things when he thought about it, but he was still young, so it was not a big issue for us.

2nd child, daughter:  was 13  months & she self-weaned... I was sad.

3rd child, a son:  was 23 months... he also self-weaned... but used a pacifier also, so that may have been why.

Answer 9

wow 2, thats a long time! good for you (i think hes done too ha)

um i havent breastfed yet but i think most mothers stop feeding at like 6ish months when the baby can start eating solids  

Answer 10

I'm nursing a 2.5 year old and a 9 month old, and I'd have to agree that you are weaning him early.  The American Academy of Family Physicans (and WHO, Unicef, etc) says two years is the MINIMUM.  If you want to wean that's fine.

However most children will self-wean between age 2-4years (usually closer to 3 years).  So he may only be half way to "done".

I'm not saying you are wrong to wean but I would much rather hear "Don't you think its too early" then "Eww are you *still* doing *that*"

http://www.breastfeeding.org.sg/comfort-...

A very common statement about older nurslings is that they nurse mainly for comfort rather than for nutritional needs. Children who only nurse when upset or tired, or who eat a large quantity or variety of other foods often fall into this category. Is this an accurate depiction? To some extent, it is. As one mother suggested, if a child has nursed his fill, then hurts himself and asks to nurse again, this time only long enough to regain his composure, what else can that second nursing be for if not for comfort? Also, how much nutrition can a child get from nursing for a few minutes per day? These are valid questions. Nevertheless, I believe that it belittles human milk, the most nutritious substance in the world, as far as humans are concerned, to speak of it in these terms. Why disparage it this way? We never talk that way about other foods.

How much nutrition do we get from eating any small amounts of food? An older child with a varied diet doesn't need human milk in the same way that I don't need to eat apples. One apple doesn't contribute too many calories to my diet, but it's still a significant nutritional contribution. If I were writing down my diet to make sure that I got the right amount of nutrients and vitamins, I would certainly not omit the apple. It doesn't matter what my emotional state was when I ate the apple either, it is still nutritionally significant. I think of human milk the same way. It may or may not contribute a significant amount of calories and it may not be essential to sustain life, but on the days when a child consumes it, it is nutritionally significant. And that doesn't even include the other health benefits of human milk, such as protection from disease or gastrointestinal discomfort.

Why do we expect more from human milk than from any other food source? If a child doesn't appear to need human milk for survival, we as a society are quick to decide that breastfeeding is now unnecessary and that every effort should be made to wean the child.

http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.ht...

In societies where children are allowed to nurse "as long as they want" they usually self-wean, with no arguments or emotional trauma, between 3 and 4 years of age.

[...]

And on and on. The minimum predicted age for a natural age of weaning in humans is 2.5 years, with a maximum of 7.0 years.

In terms of the benefits of extended breastfeeding, there have been a number of studies comparing breastfed and bottlefed babies in terms of the frequency of various diseases, and also IQ achievement. In every case, the breastfed babies had lower risk of disease and higher IQs than the bottle-fed babies. In those studies that divided breastfed babies into categories based on length of breastfeeding, the babies breastfed the longest did better in terms of both lower disease and higher IQ. In other words, if the categories were 0-6 months of breastfeeding, 6-12 months, 12-18 months and 18-24+ months, then the 18-24+ month babies did the best, and the 12-18 month babies did the next best, and the 6-12 months babies did the next best, and the 0-6 months babies did the worst of the breastfed groups, but still much better than the bottlefeeding group. This has been shown for gastrointestinal illness, upper respiratory illness, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, heart disease, and on and on and on. Likewise, the babies nursed the longest scored the highest on the IQ tests. One important point to notice is that none of these studies looked at children who had nursed longer than 2 years. Anyone 18-24 month or longer was lumped into big category. Presumably, the benefits continue to accrue, as your body doesn't *know* that the baby has bad a birth day and suddenly start producing nutritionally and immunologically worthless milk.

However, no one has yet proved, either way, that the benefits of breastfeeding either continue or stop at two years of age, because the appropriate studies have not been done. The trend during the first two years is clearly for continuing benefits the longer you nurse. Clearly the phenomenon of dimishing returns is at work here -- the first six months of breastfeeding are clearly much more important in terms of the baby's nutrition and immunological development than the six months from 3.5 to 4.0 years. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't continue to provide breast milk if your baby wants and yo

Answer 11

I am still nursing at 9 months and have no plans on stopping anytime soon...my baby will wean herself when she is ready too...everything you choose to do someone will object just do what works best for you and your baby!!! Congrats on nursing that long I hope to do the same

Answer 12

my daughter until 15 months and i only stop because i am currently pregnant with baby number two . so they say it could bring up labor later on if i dont stop so i did otherwise i would have kept goign until at least 2 years . good job .